_WITH THE FLAG TO PRETORIA._ [Illustration: _S. Begg._] HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN VISITING HER WOUNDED SOLDIERS. The Queen has throughout the war shown the greatest solicitude for the wounded. On March 22, 1900, Her Majesty paid a visit to the Herbert Hospital at Woolwich, and personally handed gifts of flowers to over a hundred wounded men, in each case accompanying the gift with a few words of sympathy, which often had reference to the services of the particular man whom she addressed. The patients included survivors from Colenso, Spion Kop, &c. The Irish soldiers, whose gallantry had been specially noteworthy, were favoured with special notice. The Queen was accompanied by the Princess Christian and the Princess Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein.] WITH THE FLAG TO PRETORIA _A History of the Boer War of 1899-1900_ BY H. W. WILSON _Author of "Ironclads in Action," &c. &c._ ILLUSTRATED MAINLY FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND AUTHENTIC SKETCHES TAKEN IN SOUTH AFRICA VOL. I. LONDON PUBLISHED BY HARMSWORTH BROTHERS, LIMITED 1900 [Illustration] PREFACE. The chief point of interest in the South African war, apart from its political aspect, will always be that it was the first great struggle fought out under the new conditions which smokeless powder has introduced. No invention has made a greater change in the art of war than this; the revolution is so profound that it can only be compared with that brought about by the general adoption of firearms four hundred years or more ago. So late as the Spanish-American war of 1898 a large part of the United States army was equipped with the Springfield rifle, firing smoke-producing powder, so that in that war, in spite of the fact that the Spanish Army was supplied with the Mauser, the full consequences of the revolution could not be observed and ascertained. The British Army, when it took the field in October, 1899, was face to face with factors the precise effect of which could only be conjectured. Magazine, or, to give them their older name, "repeating," rifles had been employed as far back as the American Civil War of 1861-5, though they were in every way vastly inferior to our modern Mausers and Lee-Metfords. But smokeless powder was a distinctly novel element.